Turtle
Turtle (originally called Turtle Road Kill) was a middleweight competitor built by Thomas Petruccelli for Sam Steyer to compete in the 1994 US Robot Wars. It competed in the 1999 Long Beach competition as well Seasons 1.0, 4.0 and 5.0 of BattleBots. It was a green, wedged, octagonal shaped robot which had absolutely no weapons. The robot was first painted to look like a turtle splayed across a road, with the yellow acting as road lines. For season 5.0, it was repainted to look like a cartoon turtle, complete with shell, flippers and head. It was not invertable and had no self-righting mechanism. Despite this, Turtle did well, reaching the semifinals of Season 5.0. Robot History Long Beach 1999 Turtle Road Kill's first BattleBots match was against Ankle Biter, but it lost by knockout. It then fell into the loser's bracket, where it recieved a first-round bye and then fought Scorpion "Beta 3" and knocked it out. Turtle Road Kill's next battle was a rematch against Ankle Biter, but it won this time on a crowd's vote. Turtle Road Kill fought Carnivore next, and it won by another knockout. Junior was Turtle Road Kill's next opponent, but despite being inverted after driving over the killsaws, Turtle Road Kill managed to win the battle. In the semifinals, Turtle Road Kill met Deadblow, and despite being pounded repeatedly by Deadblow's hammer, Turtle Road Kill won on a crowd's vote. For a place against Son of Smashy in the finals, Turtle Road Kill had to fight Knee-Breaker, but it was knocked out and lost the battle. This gave Turtle Road Kill third place in the middleweight division. Season 1.0 Sam Steyer first brought Turtle into the BattleBox for Season 1.0 of BattleBots. It recieved a bye for the first round, thus giving him a free pass to round 2. However, luck was not on his side as his first true fight with Turtle was against the later 3-time middleweight champion, Hazard. Turtle Road Kill started the fight by running away from Hazard's deadly helicopter blade, until it eventually ran straight at Hazard, which tossed Turtle Road Kill into the air. However, the sheer force of the hit broke Hazard's weapon motor, and the fight was quickly turned into a pushing and shoving match. Hazard's wedge prevented Turtle Road Kill from pushing him around, but Turtle Road Kill managed to push Tony Buchignani's disabled spinbot across the killsaws in a potentially match deciding move. Hazard retaliated by pushing Turtle Road Kill onto the arena off-ramps, and the robot ended up stuck in such a way that Hazard won with a KO with only 1 second left in the fight. Season 4.0 Sam Steyer was persuaded back into the BattleBox for Season 4.0, narrowly winning by a 23 - 22 decision against Buddy Lee Don't Play In The Street in a close ramming bout in which Turtle's design kept Buddy Lee from pushing it around. Disaster struck the Turtle however, as its driver Sam Steyer was forced to abandon the robot due to family business. Turtle Road Kill was taken in by its builder Thomas Petruccelli but was unable to compete with it due to the one robot per weightclass rule, and Petruccelli had already entered Bad Attitude for the Middleweight weightclass. After some talking, Jim Smentowski offered to take the Turtle in and contacted BattleBots staff about the change. With just a few minutes left before Turtle Road Kill's second fight, Turtle Road Kill was under Smentowski's ownership, but he was unable to practice driving the robot due to the short amount of time left. Jim Smentowski's first ever drive, let alone fight with Turtle Road Kill was against Luke Yoder's Velocity. The fight was a quick one however, over in just 53 seconds as somehow, Jim had managed to slam into Velocity and rammed the bot into the arena spke strip. Once they came apart, Velocity had stopped moving and was therefore knocked out. Turtle Road Kill's next fight was against IceCube. The fight started with both bots rushing the center of the arena. Turtle and Ice Cube slammed together in a tremendous crash, sending Ice Cube reeling. Ice Cube recovered and came charging back, missing Turtle. The two Middleweights charged and slammed into each other a few more times, then on one particular hit, Ice Cube spun around and landed face down on the plow. Helpless, Ice Cube had no way to recover from that position, so Jim immediately charged Turtle into it and knocked it back down and into the game. Several more shoves and charges later, Ice Cube once again landed on its plow. Turtle Road Kill was charged into Ice Cube again to knock it over as the time on the clock ran out. Turtle Road Kill won by a 32 - 13 judges' decision. Space Monkey was Turtle Road Kill's next opponent. However, Space Monkey's team was having problems with their robot's receiver, and being the sportsman he is, Jim agreed with the team to postpone the match. Once they eventually started the match, it was fairly uneventful with both robots pushing each other across the BattleBox several times. Luckily for Turtle Road Kill though, Space Monkey was beginning to have radio problems again, and Turtle Road Kill took advantage by ramming them into the spikestrip to claim an easy 1 minute 32 KO. This level of success managed to finally beam Turtle Road Kill into a televised match, which it unfortunately lost against Season 2 runners up El Diablo. The fight began fairly well for Turtle Road Kill, but a devastating blow from the killsaws rendered one half of Turtle Road Kill useless. El Diablo then pushed Turtle Road Kill into the pulverizer, where it sustained numerous blows. El Diablo won on a 31 - 14 judge's decision. Season 5.0 Jim Smentowski completely gutted Turtle for season 5.0 and replaced the entire electronics system. The drivetrain received some minor upgrades, with the armor being considerably thicker to prevent future killsaw damage. Despite all the weight adding, Turtle ended up 3 pounds lighter than its Season 4.0 version at just 87 lbs. Turtle's first Season 5.0 battle was against Heavy Metal Noise. In this battle, Turtle attempted to move around Heavy Metal Noise's spinning discs, but it was unable to do so as it took some hits from Heavy Metal Noise's spinning discs. However, Turtle was not taking a lot of damage from these hits, so it began to fearlessly charge Heavy Metal Noise, ramming it as fast and as hard as possible until the match ended. Turtle advanced to its second fight on a 27-18 judge's decision. Little Drummer Boy was Turtle's second opponent. Turtle was extremely aggressive in this battle, ramming Little Drummer Boy as much as possible, not caring where it rammed. However, Little Drummer Boy also managed to hit Turtle hard with its drum, and at one point Turtle was high-centered in the arena. However, Little Drummer Boy freed Turtle to continue the fight. Despite this, Turtle managed to win a judge's decision, 25-20. Turtle marched on to quarterfinals, where it was against John McKenzie's Ankle Biter. Ankle Biter chewed up Turtle during the first half of the match, but it was Turtle that had the last laugh. During the 2nd minute of the fight, the robots had moved dangerously close to the killsaws, and with one skilled push, rammed Ankle Biter onto them and sent them flying into the air and landing upside down. Lacking a srimech, the only thing Ankle Biter could do was chew up the arena floor and come to a halt at the edge. Ankle Biter was counted out in 2 minutes 38 seconds. Turtle was marching on to the semifinals. Unfortunately, Turtle was severly damaged during its previous fights, and was not repaired sufficiently before going up against S.O.B. It turned out that Turtle's shell was bent so much it was scraping the floor and ao the robot was barely able to move. S.O.B scored numerous points with its awe-inspiring circular saw before winning with a 31 - 14 judges decision. Wins/Losses * Wins: 12 * Losses: 5 Category:Middleweight Robots Category:BattleBots Competitors Category:Robots that fought on television Category:Middleweight Semifinalists Category:Weaponless Robots Category:Robots with more Wins than Losses